


The Princess of Lights

by Blake



Category: AFI (Band), Music RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: 5 Times, Casual Sex, Dairy Steak, Darry Stavok, Dingy hermit gets over himself!, Happy Ending, M/M, Other, Panties, Period-Typical Homophobia, Polyamory, Pubic Hair, Tattoos, This is My Design, blood mention, brief and non-graphic depictions of violent hate crime, but no names are mentioned except, gender stuff, generational gaps, hints of other pairings, hustin burganlake, the bunny necklace, the eggplant parmesan, the upside down cross
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:33:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22943350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake
Summary: When they end up alone together in a fancy, private camping trailer in the middle of the desert, Davey’s not sure if he’s more surprised by himself or by Harry.or,5 times Davey sees Harry's pubes, and 1 time he shaves them off.
Relationships: Davey Havok/Harry Styles
Comments: 12
Kudos: 26
Collections: Hairy Styles Pubefest 2020





	The Princess of Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Oh god. Where do I begin. 1D fandom, meet Davey Havok. He's a vegan edgelord in his 40s whose punk band eventually became a popular 2000s "emo" band and whose fans worship him like he's the devil himself. He's tragically been in love with the same guy for twenty years but they can never really be together because Davey is insufferable to be around, so he surrounds himself with attractive young people who make him feel better about himself I guess. He's just resigned to his same miserable trajectory. BuT wHat iF SOmetHiNG cHanGed?
> 
> This story exists for a few reasons.  
> 1\. Davey Havok apparently has a huge and vocal irl crush on Harry Styles because of this eggplant incident that I don't actually fully believe, pink shoes, but it's something to work with.  
> 2\. As an ex-AFI fan, I have a bone to pick with mr. hammock and making him grow up and get over himself in fiction feels like taking control of the narrative or something.  
> 3\. I'm constantly sad about LGBTQ-erasure in the music industry, and so I'm feeling angsty about all the psychological damage of fans deciding you're straight when you've said over and over again that you're pansexual and talked about not being cis-gendered and concretely changed gender performance in punk and alternative music scenes. And then that ends up having this generational sadness about it, because new generations of LGBTQ people don't have the visceral connection to history that the prior generations have.  
> I don't know, this was initially supposed to be crack fic, then it was supposed to be an angsty meditation, and somehow it ended up somewhere in between, and this author's note is getting longer than the story! I'm not going to include a picture of derby hancock here because I don't like to look at his face. But google image searches really are a thing! So, thanks for reading! Don't recommend getting into AFI/Blaqk Audio unless it's just for through the lens of it being gay art. It's all tragically bad spells.
> 
> And big thank you to Jen for putting on this pubefest 2020!

The first time Davey Havok sees Harry Styles’ pubes, it’s because of a vegan eggplant parmesan.

“Again, I’m so, so sorry about the eggplant,” Harry tells him for the twelfth time. Davey usually hates when people come swaying into his personal space with boozy breath, but Harry Styles somehow smells nice as he does it. Davey also usually hates when big-shot celebrities just eat whatever food has been served to their table instead of noticing that it’s not what they ordered, but most big-shot celebrities don’t later realize their mistake and get down on one knee and pay Davey’s bill in apology.

“Please, it was the waiter’s fault.” Davey hears his own voice take on that tinny, flustered tone he hasn’t used in a while. He kind of gave up on being surprised by things after a few decades of sustained heartbreak, finding out the hard way that fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and having all his spells cave in on him and fuck up all his plans.

Harry stands up, braced with two hands on Davey’s table and leaning coyly forward like he’s showing off cleavage that’s not exactly there. “Usually I’d have a boyfriend with me who’d stop me from doing something so rude.” If Davey’s supposed to blink, he doesn’t. Harry may never have been on his radar before tonight, but the second they started talking, he could _tell._ That’s part of why he’s actually flustered. But he’s suddenly much less flustered when Harry bats his eyelashes and adds, “But I don’t have one in _this city_ ,” because that’s one of the most delightfully bad pickup lines he’s heard in a long time.

When they end up alone together in a fancy, private camping trailer in the middle of the desert, Davey’s not sure if he’s more surprised by himself or by Harry. Davey doesn’t _do_ this whole Brokeback Mountain, great outdoors thing, and he’s usually bringing people back to _his_ place, because the people he’s with are usually either twenty-somethings with five roommates all trying to break into the entertainment industry, or cheating on their wives, or whatever.

And Harry, well. Davey’s pretty sure Harry has no idea who he is. He may not even know that Davey knows who _he_ is. It’s difficult to see, under all that sticky-sweet, English politeness and feminine wiles, what Harry’s angle is, or if he has one.

The only thing Davey’s sure of is that his cheeks hurt from smiling so much.

“Oh, you have tattoos,” Harry slurs, reaching across the distance to grab Davey’s wrist and thumb across the blacked-out skin peeking out from the cuff of his shirt.

“Um, yeah.” Davey isn’t usually in a social circle where having tattoos in and of itself is a conversation topic. Usually, people ask him what tattoos he had blacked out and why, or, if they know him, why he covered them up when they were so iconic. Anyways, people are more likely to eagerly show him their own tattoos, his lyrics on their skin, which used to feel like an honor but now just reminds him that he’ll never be free from the magic of his own poorly planned spells. “I mean, most of it’s just blacked-out cover-ups now, but—”

“Oh no.” Harry keeps stroking Davey’s wrist with his fingertips. He sounds so mournfully sad, Davey thinks it has to be fake. Harry’s probably not even listening to what he’s saying. But when he looks up at Harry’s face, he’s focused intently on Davey’s skin like it’s an undressed wound. Which it is, but Davey doesn’t really let anyone know that. “What did you used to have?”

Spooked, Davey takes the opportunity to pull his arm back to take out his phone. Embarrassing as it is to google pictures of himself shirtless, it’s good to have the minute to recoup and figure out what the fuck he’s doing with an eggplant-stealing ex-boybander in the middle of the desert. And not even the good kind of boybander. How did Hunter get to sleep with the genius behind _FutureSex/LoveSounds_ and Davey ends up camping with the latest Mick Jagger?

Harry doesn’t react in any observable way to the fact that Davey is famous enough to google shirtless pictures of. He just scrolls through the pictures, thumb dragging across Davey’s phone screen, probably leaving oily prints behind. “Your tattoos were so adorable,” Harry declares after a few quiet moments. “Oh my god, I love that little creature there. That is so cute.”

Davey laughs out loud. “I wish you could convince my grandma of that,” he says, remembering each time he came back to a family gathering with a new tattoo and had his entire Italian family pick at him like seagulls, telling him he shouldn’t be ruining his skin with images of the devil, that his tattoos were too scary and he’d never find a girlfriend who didn’t run away at the sight of him. “You seem like the kind of guy grandmas listen to.”

“What’s this?” Harry interrupts, apparently still dead focused on the google image search.

“What’s what?” Davey refuses to look at the screen. There are a lot of things in his past he’d rather forget about, like green eyeshadow.

“This, like, you know, cross, shaved into your—”

“Upside-down cross,” Davey corrects automatically. God forbid he get mistaken for a Christian.

Harry seems to be one of those people who alternates between listening so intently you feel like the center of the world and bringing everything back around to his own life as if your experiences are just fodder for his consideration. It’s honestly ideal, in Davey’s opinion. Instead of more invasive follow-up questions, Harry just asks, “Do you think I could do that?”

Davey was wondering then they’d actually get to the part of this scene where clothes start coming off. “Let me see.”

Then looking turns into touching, touching turns into appraising, and it doesn’t take long for Davey to figure out the boy likes to be told he’s pretty and that he’s doing a good job. So Davey doesn’t get to punish him for stealing his eggplant parmesan. Getting Harry Styles to come all over his own stomach and rub it all into his thick, brown pubic hair kind of makes up for the whole thing.

~~

The second time he sees Harry Styles’ pubes, they’re both shopping for furniture at the same boutique.

“Oh, hi,” Harry says, traipsing across the sparse showroom toward Davey, whose name he’s notably omitting from his greeting. It’s fine. Davey would have forgotten Harry’s name, too, if he hadn’t recognized him from, you know, everything.

Davey sends a bright smile and initiates the kind of small talk one initiates in such situations.

But Harry only plays along for a minute before looking nervously around and pulling Davey to the back of the room. Davey clears his throat in surprise, but prepares himself for anything. It’s been a long time since he snuck around hooking up in secret in places like furniture boutiques. He doesn’t know what to expect.

He’s honestly relieved when, in a quiet corner, Harry shoves his pants down just low enough to show off the heart shape shaved into his pubes.

“Oh!” Davey doesn’t know what else to say. Apparently, Harry took inspiration from his edgy, rebellious, inventive self-expression, drained all the darkness and struggle and _Davey_ out of it, and claimed it for his own body. Kids these days. “I’m honored,” he settles on. Strangely enough, it’s true.

“You like it?” Harry asks, needy edge in his voice.

Davey traces the shape with a fingernail just to watch abdominals tighten and a twitch somewhere in those trousers.

He ends up swallowing that time, scraping his thumb over the heart above Harry’s pubic bone like a lucky crystal.

~~

The third time, it’s a text message. A dick pic, really. Harry’s big hand holding Harry’s big cock under newly pink-dyed pubes trimmed into a crisp heart shape. It’s like he gets this shit professionally done. Like he has his own personal pubes stylist. Davey’s knees ache with the memories of contorting himself in weird positions just to figure out how to shave his own legs in the 90s, in secret and alone, because if it didn’t work out, then no one could know about it. He bled so many times trying to figure shit out, because androgyny wasn’t something you could cultivate without taking a few punches and nicking a few ankles. The caption to the picture says:

_Progress_

~~

The fourth time is also a picture, taken by someone else from a few feet away. Davey wonders if the lace panties pictured were a gift from the photographer. He wonders if the photo is a throwaway memento from someone else’s sex life, or if Harry stopped the person mid-kiss and said, “Hey, I need you to take a picture of me for this guy I’ve fucked twice and who gave me the idea to dye my pubes in seasonal pastels.”

Davey doesn’t really have any idea what Harry’s love-life is like. Their text conversations have been limited to simple topics, like preferred pronouns, or things like, _Saw a picture of you with long hair and lipstick,_ and in response, _I saw a picture of you with lace gloves and pearls_. He doesn’t know if Harry has a main somebody, someone he circles back to without fail, or if he’s just afloat, with a freedom Davey sometimes likes to pretend he might have.

Davey gets Harry’s address just to mail him a bunny necklace. He laughs at himself with bubbles in his stomach when he packs it up. He’s so used to being surrounded by people vying to win the dubious honor of entering his casual sex network. He gives these necklaces to guys and girls and neithers of all kinds who wear it with a pride specific to being one of his chosen ones. For the first time, he feels like a spoke in someone _else’s_ hub, and he can only imagine what Harry Styles will think of the gift. A cute animal. A pretty necklace for a pretty girl. It will probably sit in a box with a thousand pieces of jewelry more expensive than Davey can comfortably afford.

Instead of feeling misunderstood, Davey feels a great relief of pressure.

It’s not that it’s impossible to find people who don’t know who he is. It’s just that most people who don’t know who he is also happen to be unappealing to him. But here’s Harry Styles, meat-eater, heavy drinker, entitled millionaire who gets to play dress-up every day without any effect on his closet, and apparent fan of _country_ music, and Davey’s head over heels. Harry is everything he should hate, or at least resent for having it so easy. Instead, Davey keeps looking at the picture of with the panties and the lavender pubes peeking out and makes himself come imagining Harry calling his tattoos cute.

It feels like transformation. It feels like some of his curses unfurling and letting in air.

~~

He should probably expect the picture of the bunny necklace nested in a bed of lavender, but it takes him by surprise, and he ends up smiling so hard in public that his friend asks him what he’s looking at.

~~

Davey drives all the way to the desert just to suck on Harry’s nipples, because Harry apparently thinks that’s where he lives. They finger each other and make out, and the filthy-pretty things Harry says make Davey feel young and old at the same time.

Lying naked in bed and smoking while Davey breathes from the cracked-open window, Harry asks, “Will you shave them for me?”

Davey assumes Harry’s asking for help sculpting a new design into the full purple bush. He asks what Harry wants, but the mournful answer is, “No, like, smooth, clean. I’ve got a shoot tomorrow.” Harry’s warm green eyes meet Davey’s carefully, like he’s imparting a very important message. “I want you to do it.”

Masking his apprehension, Davey sets Harry up on the edge of the bathroom sink and kneels. It’s silly, but he can’t help thinking that he’s about to strip away the fragile thread holding them together, or rather, holding Davey under the magic of this counter-spell, this enchantment that makes him forget about how bound up in self-inflicted chains his own heart is.

“It’s like our baby you’re killing,” Harry mumbles around the hand-rolled joint Davey has given up on not inhaling from second-hand.

That makes Davey snort, which means the magic must not be gone yet. He’s only made a couple of swipes with the razor, and Harry’s the one pouting. Davey’s knees ache with contorting himself into weird positions to hold Harry’s sensitive parts carefully away from the blade while shaving line after clean line. With each new stripe of pale, smooth skin, he keeps expecting to feel the magic dissipate, but it doesn’t. He smiles so hard that Harry asks him what he’s looking at.

“Progress,” Davey answers, tasting the inside of his cheek.

He leaves baby-smooth skin behind, not a nick in sight.


End file.
